It's the gift that counts

I have serious issues when it comes to buying gifts for people. My usual and customary tendency toward indecisiveness becomes a crippling and paralyzing force when faced with picking out gifts for friends and family. If my friend and I were at the store together and he or she picked up an item, showed it to me and said, "I would absolutely LOVE to have this EXACT thing! This one! Right here! This one I'm holding RIGHT NOW!" I might feel confident in my decision to purchase it for him or her. Maybe.

The blame for this singular facet of my personality lies square on the shoulders of my friend Portland, about whom I have spoken on a couple of occasions.

It was Christmastime and our friendship was such that we exchanged gifts on special occasions. Other than family, I didn't have a lot of people to shop for that year. That was good because I also didn't have a lot of money. I thought if I could find the perfect gift for Portland, he would know that what I lacked in money I made up for in thoughtfulness.

So, I began to think. The more thought, the better, I thought. For a gift to be truly thoughtful, it must take into account the preferences and personality of the recipient. It should say, "I know you well enough to know that you would like this." Personally, I also really like to receive gifts that are things I would use if I had them but would never actually go out and buy for myself--useful but slightly impractical. Also, a dash of creativity goes a long way toward saying, "I was thinking about you."

Well, Portland didn't have a lot of diverse hobbies. He liked music, but he only deemed a few select artists worthy of his time. He collected rare, bootleg recordings of worthy performers but he already had every recording known to man. I didn't want to risk trying to buy something rare that he might already have or that he might deem unworthy.

Portland was also into computers. His personal computer was always a work-in-progress, waiting for the next memory or operating system upgrade. I would be way over my head trying to find the latest and greatest computer thingie.

But, an idea slowly formed. I knew that his computer was in the basement and that the basement was pretty cold in December. We would often chat in the wee hours of the morning and he would complain that his parents had turned off the heat when they went to bed. His ill-tempered cat occasionally deigned to sit on his lap to keep it warm, but for the most part he had to wear layers and layers of clothes.

Aha! thought I. What about a big box full of keeping-warm stuff? Polar fleece blankets were very popular that year and all the stores had stacks of them piled on the shelves. I picked out a manly pattern, lest a snuggly blanket seem too girly. I added a Far Side mug (he was a fan), several packets of gourmet hot chocolate, and a pair of those stretchy gloves, which I thought would keep his hands warm while he typed.

My package was complete. Because of the fluffy blanket, it was a very large box, but not heavy. I mailed it off and waited for him to tell me it had arrived. He called a few days later.

"So, I had to go to the post office today and pick up a big box...a big box from Camino. It had your return address on it..." he told me coyly. "I wonder what's in it."

"You haven't opened it yet? I'm surprised you're waiting until Christmas. I wouldn't. If you want to open it ahead of time, go ahead. I'm not going to wait to open yours."

"Well, since I probably won't send mine until after Christmas, you won't have to wait."

"Uh, okay. Open it if you want, though."

"Well, my brother was here when I brought the box home. He's dying to know what's in it. He's been bugging me non-stop all day. I might not be able to put him off. He's excited because it's such a big box, but not heavy. We can't even guess what it might be. I'll let you know if we do open it, though."

The peer pressure eventually got to be too much and he didn't end up waiting until Christmas. During our next conversation, he was much more subdued.

"So, I opened the box. Thanks for the present. It's really nice."

"Yeah? Did you like it? Did you get what I was trying to do? It's all stuff to keep you warm. You know, since you spend so much time in the basement on the computer."

"Uh, yeah. I get it now. I, uh, wasn't sure before. So, yeah, thanks."

"Wasn't sure? What do you mean? You sound weird. Was it damaged?" I began to worry that the mug had shattered or the cocoa packets had leaked all over the inside of the box.

"No. Everything was fine."

"Well, what is the deal then? I can tell there's something wrong."

"Well, it just that... um... this is mostly my brother's thing, so don't get me wrong or anything... it's just that well, you have to understand, he was really excited to see what was in the box...so when I opened it... well...I mean I really liked it when I first saw it..."

"Just spit it out!"

"Well, when I opened it, my first thought was, 'Cool, what a great blanket!' But my brother was there and he said, 'What kind of crap is this? A blanket? What did she do? Just grab the first thing she saw when she walked into the store? How stupid!' But that's not what I thought, honest. That was all my brother."

"Well, I don't really care what your brother thinks. The gift wasn't for him, anyway. It doesn't surprise me that he doesn't 'get it.' So what's the problem?"

"It's just that...after he said that... I got to thinking, 'What if she did just grab the first thing she saw?' And then I got to thinking that it did kind of look like something that someone who didn't really want to buy a gift would pick out. So, did you really want to get me a present this year or did you just get this because you had to? Because, if not, then I'll just send this back to you..."

I was speechless. My gift, the one I had been so proud of and had taken such care with, was not only unappreciated, but had sent him into a state of paranoid frenzy about whether or not we were actually friends.

More than anything, though, this was an indicator of his very, very weak character. His brother's mindless comments influenced him so greatly that he began to dislike the gift that, by his own admission, he initially liked.

Serious injury inflicted. It haunts me to this day. I'm scarred for life.

The next year (why we were still friends the next year is still a mystery to me) at Christmastime, I went shopping for him again. I made one stop. I grabbed the first shirt I saw in his size. It looked exactly like a shirt he already owned. I called him and told him I was sending something but that I had put absolutely no thought into his gift and that I truly did buy him the first thing I saw and that he should prepared to be disappointed.

The irony was lost on him. He had forgotten the previous year's debacle. When the package arrived, he called to tell me how surprised he was.

"Well, I was expecting something stupid because you kept talking about how lame it was...but when I opened the box, there was this really cool shirt inside. I love it! It's just like one I have! Why would you think that I wouldn't like it?"

Why, indeed. I guess, for some, it really is the gift that counts.

Defining characteristic

I've posted before about Mr. Portland, the Great Toothpaste Rescuer. This is, by far, my favorite of the many, many funny stories related to our tenure as friends.

Portland was visiting (again? might have been the same visit) and we went shopping for the day. Round about dinnertime, I suggested we stop and get something to eat on the way home. "Great idea," he gushed, "I'm in the mood for some pancakes." We would be driving by at least two restaurants I could think of that would still be serving flapjacks at 6:30 on a Saturday night so I told him either Carrow's or Buttercup Pantry would be our best bets. As a bonus, the restaurants are right across the street from each other in Placerville, so if one was too busy, we could just mosey on over to the other.

"Hmmm...I've never heard of either of those places before. Are they expensive?" he queried earnestly.

"Well, no. I mean, they serve pancakes at dinnertime. They are not five-star dining establishments. Maybe similar or slightly better than Denny's."

"Ooh. Well, at Denny's they charge for each glass of milk. It's not refillable. What about these places? I like to have lots and lots of milk with my pancakes."

"I don't know for sure, but, yeah, you probably have to pay for each glass of milk."

"I don't want to go then. But, golly, I really want some pancakes tonight! Can we stop by the store so I can get a pint of milk and then I'll just bring it in with me?"

"Uh, sure. You're going to carry your own milk into the restaurant?"

"Sure. I've done it before. They don't like it, but what are they going to do? Kick me out?"

He had a valid point, so we stopped for some milk and rolled on over to Carrow's. As we entered, he again expressed his concern that he wasn't familiar with this restaurant. He hesitated in the lobby, pint of milk in hand, and then strode forward to confront the hostess.

"Do you serve breakfast all day? Can I still get some pancakes?"

"Yes sir. We serve breakfast 24-hours a day."

"Well," he continued dubiously, "Can I see a menu?"

She obliged and he found the pancake page.

"This pancake breakfast here... how many pancakes will I get? The picture shows 5. Will I get 5 pancakes?"

"Yes sir. Our meals are pretty much like what the pictures show."

"How big are the pancakes? Like, sometimes you get 5 pancakes, but they are the silver-dollar kind."

The hostess looked confused now. "I guess they are regular pancake size. They are not small, if that's what you mean. Maybe this big..." She made a circle with her hands.

"Humph. So about 4 inches, huh. They look bigger in the picture. That's what I'm talking about. It's such a rip-off to buy pancakes at a restaurant."

He wavered now, unsure of how to reconcile his nagging hunger for pancakes with the fact that he might get ripped off if we ate there.

"I think we should go," he whispered conspiratorially. "I mean, they haven't seated us yet. We don't have to eat here. Didn't you say there's another place around? It's just for 5 4-inch pancakes, they want $4.99. That's almost a buck twenty-five per pancake!"

We sneaked out while the hostess had her back turned and proceeded to have the exact same conversation with the hostess across the street at Buttercup Pantry. I knew it wouldn't go well. Buttercup Pantry was even worse than Carrows. They were charging $5.50 for 4 5-inch pancakes. Not only were they more expensive, there was one pancake less! The outrage!

Portland hung his head in despair, "Isn't there anywhere else we can go? This is your town. Where can we get good pancakes?"

I told him that the two restaurants we had already been at served perfectly good pancakes. I didn't think there was anywhere we could go that would give us FREE pancakes, though. Since we were both hungry, I suggested we just pick the lesser of the two evil flapjack joints.

"So you'd be okay with paying those outrageous prices? You're like my mom. She'll just eat wherever, just because she's hungry. She's the kind of person who parks in the most expensive lot downtown, too, just because it's close to where she wants to go. She could save $2 or $3 if she'd just be willing to drive around a little and look for somewhere cheaper. That drives me crazy."

I refrained from telling him that he probably drove her crazy, too. Instead I suggested we just go home and we could make pancakes from scratch. After all , we already had the milk.

***
Some months later, Portland and I were talking on the phone. He related to me an elaborate story about the supermarket was trying to rip him off by advertising some of its candybars at a low price right next to some candy that was not on sale. If he hadn't been paying close attention, he might have been duped into paying 33 cents for his candy, instead of the low low price of 25 cents he thought he would be getting.

He then described the reaction of his two friends who were with him at the time. "They were just being so pushy and trying to get me to buy the candy anyway just so we could leave. The checker had to get the manager to void the sale so it was taking a while. I can't believe they just wanted me to buy it and leave, even though it wasn't on sale."

I made sympathetic noises. "Then they said I was cheap. The cheapest person they know even. I'm not cheap. I'm just frugal. There's a big difference. What do you think?"

Well, since he asked, I had to confess that, yes, I thought he was both frugal and cheap. In fact, I considered it his defining characteristic. If someone had asked me to say the first thing I thought of when I thought of him, I would say, "Cheap."

He was open-mouthed, jaw on the floor, shocked. He honestly, truly, deep down in his heart of hearts did not believe he was cheap. No evidence could convince him otherwise. He'd say, "Well, I like to get a good deal" or "Sure I returned that because I found it for 25 cents less at at store across town" or "Yeah, but those pancake restaurants were totally trying to rip me off!" But he couldn't see it. And I'm sure he never will.

Would definitely eat an eclair from the trash

When I was a senior in college, I struck up an internet friendship with a guy from Portland. We seemed to have a lot in common, although I eventually came to realize that it was mostly just surface stuff, like music and movies.

Internet chatting was still pretty new at the time and the process of getting to know someone online was trial and error. Basic common sense dictated rules for safety but the subtle nuances of quickly determining whether or not someone was a total loser had not been established.

We ended up visiting each other in our respective hometowns a couple of times for concerts and special events or whatever. It was a great life lesson to me that no matter how famously you might get along with someone via e-mail or on the phone, all bets are off when you actually have to spend one-on-one time with that person, in person. A person's real-life quirks can never be fully communicated. You have to experience them first-hand.

The day before Portland's first visit, I ran out of toothpaste. It was no big deal. I had another tube waiting in the wings. I threw the empty into the bathroom trashcan and proceeded to squeeze from the bottom of the new tube and flatten as I went up.

The next day Portland gleefully presented me with my old toothpaste tube. "I found this in your trashcan. Look! I flattened it out a little bit more and there's at least another day's worth in there!" And then, a little reprovingly, "Why would you throw that out?"

I should have been grateful that he arrived in the nick of time to save me another day of toothpaste. I might have pleaded my case by saying that I had wanted to coax the last pearls of Colgate from their vinyl prison but I lacked the strength in my fingers. I could have graciously accepted his gift, they way you might accepted the bloody carcass of a dead bird that your cat has left on your doorstep. The fact that he had gone through my trash and, gee, isn't that a little bit weird, didn't even enter my mind.

My thought was, "That was in the trash, snuggled in among used Kleenex, plaque-covered strings of dental floss, and dirty who-knows-what-else and now you want me to drag its germ-infested tip across my toothbrush and then PUT IT IN MY MOUTH!"

What I said was, "Awww, thanks. Since, you rescued it, why don't you use it today?"

And he did.